I never imagined that my wife would leave like that.
When I came home in the evening, a letter was left on the table.
"I'm sick and tired of living with you. I'm leaving home--"
At first, I felt nothing. But when I realized that there was no one who would take care of my meals, I got angry. But that anger soon changed to loneliness, I noticed I was alone in my room and I had nothing to lean on.
'Why couldn't I treated her more kindly?'
'How can I live on from now?'
I was retired from my job as a captain I had been working so long. I was jobless and I was nothing without my wife, Olga.
I always gave Olga a hard time who supported me so faithfully. It was too late to regret. Although I was aged enough to be called an old man, I cried like a child.

2

Call me Yuri.
Since Olga had left, I started to think about things that there were no use to think about and came to the dark side of my heart. Life was meaningless, not worth living, like a practical joke and the everyday uneasiness was the only proof of existing.
If I would go out, people of the town sounded strange. They talked poems of a fate that rhymed weirdly. They hung around me in a coincidental manner like God or Satan sent them.
I began to stay in my room.
I kept on thinking if I had done even a single thing to make Olga happy. We had been making a dacha(cottage) in the outskirts of town, but it was left abandoned. The main structure was finished but the laying bricks of the wall was uncompleted. Olga, who loved flowers, was the one yearning for it.

It was that kind of time when I got a phone call from Khriukin.
"Olga, maybe, I'm finished."
I talked to myself and at the same time, the phone rang. Already, a week had past since Olga left the apartment. The TV set had been put on for 2 days, the lights were turned off, I was eating "flatfish in tomato sauce" from the can and continuously drinking vodka as though I was trying to kill myself slowly. The fish cans were what I received instead of my wages and they were piled up high in the closet.
The color of the room when Olga stayed had disappeared.
"I want you to come to the Lenin Kolkhoz. I have something to say to you."
Khriukin used to be my boss, but I hadn't talked to him for some years. This man, who was in charge of the whole fishery around the Kamchatka Peninsula, was 20 years younger than I was, and as the way it always was, talked to me so politely.
I hated to go out, but my vodka was running out.
"Okay. I'll see you in about an hour," I answered.
I didn't even think what Khriukin wanted to talk about.

3

I put on my clothes and left home. At the hallway, I met "Old Time Dmitrii," who lived on the same floor. This old man, close to 90 years of age, had a handicapped left leg and a loss of memory. He used to be a crewman of the factory ship I had been captain of, but had retired 15 years before.
"I believe you better spend your time to make your old dacha rather than drink vodka so much."
Dmitrii said.
I was not only neighbors with Dmitrii in this apartment, but also of our dachas.
"Yes, yes, I'll do it sometime."
I answered faintly so as to leave the place in a hurry. I didn't want to talk with Dmitrii. He didn't understand that Olga was gone.
"How is Olga doing?"
Dmitrii's voice stopped my feet.
"Olga has left home."
"Oh, yes, yes! There are so many women around, so you can find another. But be well to Olga, will you?"
Dmitrii said merrily.
"I see."
My voice that answered vacantly, disappeared into the gray old wall.

The weak sunshine, that had come out at last from the afternoon in this sub arctic town, Petropavlovsk Kamchatskii, was still dazzling for me.
My apartment was on a hill in town.
I went down the street towards the sea for an 1 mile walk to the Lenin Kolkhoz, which was at the bay side. On my way, a Dutch-Russian joint venture supermarket was as usual collecting a long line of people. Although the days of communism had gone away, the statue of Lenin was still standing tall at the center square of town.
At the building of Lenin Kolkhoz, I went upstairs to the second floor and knocked the door of Khriukin's office.
There was a voice from inside and I went into the room. An employee of the Kolkhoz was still talking to Khriukin, but he left, seeing the sight of me.
Khriukin started to talk in a hurry like he was busy.
"Moscow is telling us to ship 20 tons of frozen crab to Japan by Klyuchevska."
"Crab?" asked I.
"Yes,crab."
Klyuchevska was anchored at the dock for a long time, waiting to be scrapped.
"For what reason is this order from Moscow assigned to an almost scrapped factory ship like Klyuchevska?"
I asked watching out not to blow my breath on Khriukin.
Khriukin, who wore a black jacket with no necktie, sat on the edge of his desk with his arms folded and one of his hands to his cheek, trying to figure out how to answer my question.
"Perhaps, it's because the crabs were caught by Klyuchevska," answered Khriukin.
"I won't sail anymore," said I.
Khriukin looked surprised combing up his gray hair.
"I am not asking what you wish. The captain of Klyuchevska has been, and is you!"
"But I'm retired. What is this? Compassion? Klyuchevska is to be scrapped. Even if not, there should be other captains to be in charge of," I said.
Khriukin looked as though he was worried because I have had read his mind. He spread his hands up wide.
"Ivanovich Vakhrushin! Why do you think that way? I can't believe this."
Khriukin must of felt sorry of me, knowing that my wife left me, and chosen me for this job to try to cheer me up. In the age before the Soviet Union turned into Russia, I used to obey orders with no questions. But this time, words I didn't expect came out one after another.
"Or, are you hoping me to do something wrong and slip down my pension?"
Khriukin was just surprised to my reaction.
My life on the ship owed a lot to the sacrifice of Olga and I. I also put the blame of Olga's leaving me upon that kind of life. I was able to sail well since I knew Olga was waiting for me on land. Then, without her, I had no nerves to sail anymore.
I thought at somewhere in my head, ' must be badly drunk,' but the words coming out didn't stop.
"I know what the people estimate about me," I said.
"How do they estimate about you?"
Khriukin said in a suspicious manner.
Although there was no relationship with our conversation, in my mind grew the image of a young crewman who became missing from Klyuchevska 5 years before. The sailor seemed to have fell off from the ship and died. But no one really knew the truth.
"I lacked the ability as a captain...," I said.
"You're wrong. You finished your career without a stain," Khriukin said.
But not working without a stain is at the same time, not working hard. As a matter of fact, Lenin Kolkhoz evaluated me as a captain of disability who never reached quota. It was a result of keeping away the crew of Klyuchevska from overwork. Ironically, the crewmen also didn't regard me as a good captain. Generally speaking, a respected captain is one who gain profits and advantages by accomplishing their quota, no matter how severe the labour would be.
"You have patience."
Khriukin said.
I bent my head a bit. You had to be patient if you have no ability, I thought. "Well, then I ask you for good understanding. What would become of the crew's wages?"
The Kolkhoz was in a state of bankruptcy and because of extreme inflation, the standard pay to the crewmen weren't worth buying candy for a baby.
"We will give away some of the crab to the crew," Khriukin answered. The crew had to sell their crabs to some black market to get their cash.
"The main body of the frozen crabs will be exported by Kamchatka Trading, a Russian-Japanese joint venture corporation, not by the Russian Export Public Corporation."
I had to think a little bit. At the dock, there were many ships anchored and fire sparks of welding were seen once in a while.
"I'm not in shape of accepting that, now. You better find some other captain for Klyuchevska."
I said to Khriukin and made my move to go out of the office.
"Ivanovich Vakhrushin..."
Khriukin said in an intended calm voice. "...you can't run away inside yourself."
This president of the Kolkhoz, younger than I, was not in his position for his aggressiveness or ways of utilizing people; he was in his position for his cool and keen insights towards life.
I stopped my feet. I refrained Khriukin's words and asked myself if it had been true. Yes, perhaps I wanted to stay inside myself and be sad. That was the easy way. Or, maybe it was because of the booze.
"What do you mean?"
I asked Khriukin.
"Why don't you go to find Olga? You love her, don't you? You know that if you get on the ship again, you would properly accomplish your duty and forget Olga for a while. But you are putting the blame on Olga of not sailing anymore, and you want to stay home feeling sorry about yourself."
I was struck by Khriukin's words. He was right. I had become a coward who couldn't face the reality of life.
"Anyway, give me some time to think..."
I said feeling uneasy.
"I believe that there is nothing to think about, but okay, take your time."
Khriukin walked ahead of me just to open the door of the office for me.
"By the way, I forgot to mention one thing. I want you to bring back some second hand cars from Japan." Khriukin asked me to purchase some Japanese second hand cars for the big shots of Petropavlovsk Kamchatskii, including himself.

I left the building of Lenin Kolkhoz, went to a liquor shop, bought some vodka and headed for the apartment.
I had no idea to get on Klyuchevska.
I drank until evening and there was a knock at the door.
I answered the door and found Khriukin there.
Khriukin came after work. He brought some pickles and vodka that he had bought at the market on his way.
Consequently, we drank until midnight that day.

4

The next day, under the dark and cloudy sky, I went to look at Klyuchevska, built in 1951, at the dock. The 2,000 ton factory ship, with its paint worn off and covered with rust, stood still like a ghost ship.
There was a rope that moored Klyuchevska to the dock and at the upper part of it, there was a small tern crying noisily. The migratory bird cried, "ku-lee, ku-lee." At the opposite side of the rope, a cat seemed to have been holding on something. I imagined that the cat was holding on the spouse of the bird and the spouse of the other was giving a cry of resist to the cat. But as life becomes a thing you cannot control, it was just a scene that my imagination had built up. What seemed like the cat was holding on, happened to be just its own leg it was licking on.
The tern flew away.
I walked to the cat and it ran towards me so fiercely like it was going to attack me, but slipped beside.

I turned my back to the old ship and walked to town. I became to feel better as I walked.
I recalled what Khriukin said to me the night before.
"That's the way it is, Ivanovich Vakhrushin. Moscow says via the Far East Public Corporation of Vessels, a mass-collective of bureaucratism, to use the worst ship. It would be easy to cut the costs of this business that way. You can brow up Klyuchevska and sink her any time necessary."
Then, something moved inside me. The movement was slight but like 2 broken gears making a numb noise and being connected again.

I met many people at town. They were people I hadn't met after I left the ship.
Oleg Gorodtsov who used to be a deckhand of Klyuchevska had already started to work at a bakery.
The second mate, Akakii Tarkovskii had decided to move to Khabarovsk.
There were each reason for each one.
I even met some people I didn't want to meet. Vadim, who was handsome but had a scar on his cheek, and Nick, who was short, fat and bold, came walking side by side from ahead wearing same black stripe suits. They were the so called, "Romanov Mafia" who came back from Chicago with the fall of the Soviet Union. They were like performing typical movie gangsters of the "Rolling 30s." They took part in the crab export business, so we were not strangers to each other, but we exchanged no hellos but only unfriendly glances instead.
At a bar open even in the day time, close to the movie theater, I met Zubkov who used to be the second engineer. Zubkov was called "Gambler."
"I am one who can't leave Petropavlovsk Kamchatskii for some reasons. And beside that, I hear some rumour about Klyuchevska," Zubkov said lifting up his glass of beer. "Well, the rumour are dubious, so I don't believe them that much. For example, people say that the missing sailor was thrown away from Klyuchevska and killed, because he knew too much about some secrets."
"What makes them think like that?!"
I said feeling quite indignant.
"Well, I don't know because I'm not the one who's making those rumour. There is also a rumour that Klyuchevska is connected to big business of the underground economy."
"Visions," said I looking straight in Zubkov's eyes. "By the way, can't you be on Klyuchevska again?"
"Can you pay my wages in yen or dollars in Japan?"
Zubkov said, touching his tattoo on his left hand. "I want to buy some things in Japan."
The bar was full of young men and women who were out of work.
This country had changed so much. Life became a long and winding road headed for some kind of a black hole. Hope was as little as the reason to stay away from hanging your neck from the ceiling to end life. Everything had changed a lot for me.
"I can manage it," I answered.

5

I put on the captain's cap I thought I would never wear again.
Lenin Kolkhoz announced to the people who used to work on Klyuchevska that they needed people on board again, then more than what they needed applied.

On a cloudy morning of May, Klyuchevska slowly left its dock and headed for Tokyo.
We left the bay of Petropavlovsk Kamchatskii behind and reached the Pacific Ocean still in the morning and the weather changed entirely. The gray clouds were low and the rain was falling like evening. The sea was rolling and the waves washed the deck of Klyuchevska.
In the evening, I came out from the bridge and went down the hatch to have my dinner. A rat ran across the hallway in front of me. These uninvited passengers must have made their nests in the ship. Some cats and dogs were already put on board to take care of them.
On a shelf at a corner of the officer's dining room was installed a TV set which was broadcasting a Russian satellite communication program. It was showing the news. After President Yeltin made a speech with a disgruntled face inside the unclear picture, the program all of a sudden changed to a football game. Hooligans started to fight each other in the middle of the game among UK and Italy.
I noticed they were frying garlic and baking bread. On the long dining table with vinyl plastic floral patterned cloth, two bowls of borscht were placed. I was the only one dining at the room. The other men of the crew were all busy at their positions because of the bad weather.
I poured the borscht in my dish. Since the ship rolled so much, I had to put my face very close to the dish and use my spoon busily.
After the struggle with my soup, I poured my vodka I brought to my tea glass and drank it.
Waiting for me to finish my borscht, the waitress came and put a dish of meat in front of him. She seemed to have said something I could hardly hear.
I thought she had heard, "alcoholic," but I wasn't sure.
The ship doctor, Boris came into the dining room. He got seated quietly and served himself the borscht to his dish.
I became not to find the difference between the intoxication of vodka and the rolling of the sea.
I thought of Olga.
--Olga, who was a bleed of Asian and Slavic, used to work at a state-owned department store at Leninskaya Street. She was a clerk at the tableware and ornaments corner.
We had no children.
It was 30 years ago, when we flew to our first sightseeing trip to Moscow on Aeroflot. Olga talked to me, when I was sitting deep in my seat and trying to get to sleep.
"Yuri, take a look."
Olga had been staying awake and looking outside the window. The lights of Moscow were there.

--The low but continuous noise and vibration of the ship's engine stopped all of a sudden.
I was pulled back to reality.
The engine's stopping was nothing unusual. I decided to wait for someone to come to the dining room.
In about 10 minutes, Zubkov came. The TV program had changed to a Hollywood movie. The Russian people described there were all alcoholics and danced Cossack dances.
"One of the engines has burnt down."
Zubkov didn't sit down and said standing in front of me.
"How long will it take for repairs?"
I asked.
"Before that, I don't even know if I can fix it."
Zubkov answered.
"What about the extra engine?"
"We don't have an extra engine."
A chill started to come up from the steel floor. The excessive heat of the engine were used to warm up the rooms of the ship, so it became cool as soon as the engine stopped.
"Do your best," I said. I let Zubkov sit down for his meal and left the room.

6

2 days later, thanks to the repairs that Zubkov had done, we were sailing to the south on the Okhotsk Sea--the sea that even the reckless Cossack soldiers hesitated to ship out.
The day was a shiny day that hadn't been experienced in many years in that area usually foggy everyday. There were no clouds at all, the wind blew soft and gentle and the sole hint of a fog was far away in the horizon.
But around the Kuril Islands, the engine stopped again and Zubkov went down to the engine room for the repairs.
I went to the radio room to meet the radio operator of Klyuchevska, Andrei Popov.
Andrei was sitting in front of the radio desk but listening to an American short wave program.
"What is it, Sir?"
Andrei turned around, stood up and answered formally, while turning off the switch of the radio.
"I want you to send a telegram to Khriukin."
I passed Andrei a note I had just wrote a short time before.

qTo President of Lenin Kolkhoz, M. Khriukin. The main engine has burnt down again. 7 May, 1993, 7:00pm. We are anchored at 150‹north latitude , 47‹east longitude, north of Urup Island.r

"All right?" I said and left the room.
The changing of the weather around that sea area was various. Suddenly, strong winds start to blow, rain falls down from the sky that had been so clear just a moment before, thick fogs without even a sight of 4 or 5 feet ahead appears after the sky clears again for just an instance and moist covers all around the metal parts of the ship.
I returned to the bridge.
Outside the bridge were broadly seen the Urup Island and another small island by its side.
A hour later, Andrei came into the bridge with a return message from Khriukin in his hands. I took a look at it.

qTo Captain Y. Vakhrushin, Report each progress of repairs. According to orders from the Corporation of Vessels, the entering port of Klyuchevska has changed from Chiba East Port to Kushiro Port, Hokkaido.r

--Orders are always to obey, not to think about.
I thought.

7

After midnight, when it was becoming dark at last, there was a sound of an explosion and the ship went up and down. The alarm started to blast.
I ran to the bridge, put my ears to the tubal talking device and someone was yelling.
"Fire! Fire! Explosion in the engine room!"
It was the voice of the first mate, Sergei Antonov.

If I were young, I would have slipped down the banisters, but instead, I hurried down the ladder to the hallway that lead to the engine room close to the bottom of the ship. Some crewmen who had fire extinguishers in their hands went past me. Grey and thin smoke were floating in the hallway. Sergei was holding his fire extinguisher with both of his hands and blasting in white powder into the door from which smoke were leaking close to the ceiling.
"Sergei!"
I yelled.
"Captain!" answered Sergei with only his face turned around to me.
Another voice was yelling, "Shut the door!"
The smoke was becoming thicker and coming down to the level of the knee.
A white flame came out fiercely from one of the doors to the hallway. Sergei tumbled and hit the wall behind his back.
"Get more fire extinguishers, in a hurry!"
"Shut the doors!" I shouted.
"Captain! There is still Zubkov inside!"
I reached the dark side of my heart again. Sickness, accidents and death is nothing unusual--just the delay of 1 hour, difference of 1 minute, or the distance of 1 foot divides one's fate of being dead or alive. I had come across that kind of scenes so many times.
"Shut the doors."
I said to Sergei.
"But Zubkov is still...,"
"Sergei! This is an order. Mutiny on board is to be hanged or shot! Shut the doors before the fire reaches the fuel tank!"
"Aye, aye, Sir!" The first mate who wore a moustache and had many kids said.
As Sergei yelled orders, the crewmen all started to shut the doors. Sergei made sure all the doors were shut, broke with his fist the glass that was covering the starting switch of the engine room's fire extinguish system, put his hand on the lever seeing my face.
I ordered to start the extinguish system. Sergei closed his eyes when he pulled the lever.

8

The fire went out in about a hour. At the scene where the lights were out, Zubkov's corpse was left under the emergency lights. He seemed to have tried to extinguish the fire and couldn't get away.
At daybreak, I wrote in a report about the cause of the fire like this.
qWelding sparks heated engine oil system pipe accidentally and started fire.r
The freezer of the cold storage also stopped.
Sergei and I went down to the cold storage of the ship. Sergei pulled up the heavy iron hatch on the floor. Sergei put one of his foot carefully on the ladder made down on the wall to get into the storage. I also followed him and reached the storage floor far down below.
We stood on the wooden floor.
Our breath were white but the air wasn't cold enough. I knew it by inhaling the air in my nose. The temperature was not like that in Siberia that froze the hair in one's nose.
Sergei and I watched the thermometer on the wall.
It showed 5 degrees Centigrade.
Apparently, the temperature in the cold storage was going up.
I looked upon the carton boxes containing frozen crab piled up. If the temperature would go on up like that, the boxes would start to sweat like a cold glass of water and start to melt like snow.
"Let's get out," I said to Sergei.
Since I promised to pay Zubkov in cash, his share was included there. I wanted to preserve the quality of the crabs and exchange them into cash for his family left behind.

9

At midnight on the 3rd day anchored in cold and solitude, I was turning over in bed since I couldn't get to sleep.
The rain and wind were getting strong and the ship was starting to roll. From the upper deck behind the captain's cabin, a sound of a woman's voice speaking calmly came into my ears. It seemed to be the waitress of the dining room. I listened to that voice for a while, then, I noticed something queer. The midnight hour seemed to be too late to talk at the upper deck, and furthermore, the voice didn't seem to have a mate.
Then, all of a sudden, the waitress started to scream.
The words the waitress were screaming were meaningless but seemed to be angry about something. A few minutes made her tired of screaming, and then, she started to cry. She hiccuped like a baby but soon, she got angry again.
I felt from the atmosphere that people were coming out of their cabins. I thought that I might be seeing a dream and I rose myself up on the bed.
I heard a man speak a few words to the waitress. It seemed to be Sergei.
The voice was overlapped by the waitress' scream containing a complicated mixture of sadness and anger.
Again, Sergei tried to talk to the waitress, this time, more gentle and soft than before, but it only seemed to make matters worse, and she started to scream more awfully. The other people at the upper deck were also starting to yell at the waitress and they were like a crowd trying to stop someone who was going to jump off a cliff to kill herself.
I got off bed and slowly opened the door of my cabin.
I stuck out my face, looked outside where it was raining and a sea breeze was blowing, and there was the waitress, soaked by the rain, encountering about 10 other people in a distance of about 2 feet. The man who had been trying to persuade the waitress was Sergei indeed.
"You cheap drunkard ass hole!!" screamed the waitress, turning back suddenly and she rushed her way towards my cabin.
She wore her gown, her eyes were bloodshot and her hair were standing on end.
The frightening sight made my blood run cold and I shut the door almost unconsciously. The waitress screamed meaningless words such as,
"It's you who did it!"
"You moron! Go, kill yourself!"
"Didn't I say you're no good!?"
And she started to bump fiercely on the half-shut door. I pressed the door tightly, so that the insane waitress wouldn't be able to open it. She kept on hitting the door fiercely, which opened the door by each strike, so I couldn't lock the door. At the upper deck behind the waitress, people were surrounding her, shouting things to stop her but uselessly.
Then, silence came. There was nothing else to be heard beside the sound of the waves but Sergei's low and soft voice talking.
The voice kept on talking for quite a long time. What he was saying was too silent to understand.
I felt the people start to return to their cabins.
I opened the door a little bit and looked at the upper deck.
Everyone were going down from the hatch and the stairs. Most of them were in their pajamas.
The waitress also, with her eyes watching straight ahead, went down the hatch.
Maybe, I was just drunk.
Maybe, I was just dreaming.
The people I saw looked as though they were pretending something.
Sergei came to me later and reported that the waitress had been emotionally unstable since she lost her husband in the fronts of Afghanistan but that she was okay then.
I thought about the particular woman's sickness described In Dostoyevski's "The Brothers Karamazov."

10

A week had already passed when the rescue of the anchored Klyuchevska came at last, but it was not the Russian coast guard, nor a merchant ship, nor a nuclear submarine.
In a distance of about 1,000 feet, on the foggy sea, a ship appeared.
It was a Japanese frigate.
Cutting the waves on an orange coloured rubber boat, almost turning around on the highly rolling sea, three Japanese officers in white uniforms came on to Klyuchevska. I talked with these officers in my cabin. One of them was an Russian interpreter.
"We have received a request from the Russian government to tow you to the port of Kushiro," the Japanese interpreter said in Russian.

Orders from Khriukin as the follows came by wire later.

<Let frigate Yunagi of Japanese self defense forces tow Klyuchevska to the port of Kushiro.>

Khriukin said nothing about what to do with the corpse of Zubkov.

Being towed by Yunagi the next day, Sergei fired a shot from his AK-47 to the sky from the deck of Klyuchevska. A crewman cut a rope with an axe. The corpse of Zubkov covered by a sheet slid down a wooden board stuck out from the side of the ship to the sea.
The sea was where largha seals and whales appeared.
I traced the spot where the corpse dropped. It slowly went behind and after a while, got hidden among the waves not to be recognized where it had been anymore.

11

We progressed carefully along the Kuril Islands, and on the third day being towed, arrived on the off shore where we could see the port of Kushiro and anchored there again.
I sent to Khriukin on wire that I was worried about the quality of the crabs. And also about how to respond to it.
The reply was as follows.

<Captain Y. Vakhrushin. Hand over Klyuchevska to Japanese government. Send all crewmen home.>

Nothing was answered about how to handle the crabs.
It was an answer of giving no answers, as usual: it was the proud inheritance of the Russian Navy to give answers after drinking a cup of chai(tea). Oh, how many problems are there to be solved without doing anything!
I always felt the absurdness of this world every time I met this kind of ignoring. Was it something good or bad? I didn't know.
Early in the morning the next day, a launch came from the port and a bunch of about 10 men, Japanese officers wearing white uniforms, businessmen in suits and men wearing blue working clothes with boots on their foot, came up shaking the gangplank to get on Klyuchevska. All of the crewmen of Klyuchevska watched this sight curiously lined at the side of the ship.
Though concealed behind words asking about the details of Klyuchevska's accident and the situation of the troubles and of sympathy, the most interest of the Japanese who came aboard seemed to be that about the cargo of Klyuchevska, that is, the crabs: the non-graded snow crab, king crab and Hanasaki crab caught by dragnet around the Aleutian Islands, boiled and frozen on Klyuchevska.
Since a young Japanese man who said that he worked for a syosya strongly demanded, Sergei and I went to check the crabs together with the Japanese businessmen and workers.
The workers easily went down to the cold storage far below using the steel ladder. The men in their suits had to think a moment since the height was so high, but after all, they went down slowly, some helped by the workers their steps.
Emergency lights were lighting up the inside of the cold storage. The workers put their hands on the cardboard cases of crabs without words. The men in their suits just stood around. The workers talked to each other a lot and the suit men said a couple of words to them. Removing the staples with crowbars, opening the lids of the cardboard cases and nylon sheets inside, they checked the crabs in their hands until the very bottom. Though I couldn't understand what they were talking, it seemed that the workers were estimating the qualities, while the men in their suits were only giving approval to them. The cold temperature of the northern sea preserved the half-frozen sherbet condition of the crabs, but not much longer.
The workers pulled out further more boxes from the deeper part of the pile and opened the lids. The men in the suits came close once in a while and they also touched the crabs.
Discussions became active.
As a result, the Japanese checked 10 boxes changing places until they were convinced. It took about a hour to shut the lids of the boxes and finish their whole job. They seemed to have found a firm conclusion, they talked lively, so different from the first place, sometimes even expressing bursts of laughter and went up the ladder.

12

"Captain Vakhrushin, we have a hotel room prepared for you, so please land and stay there," a bureaucrat named Takahashi who was from a public office of fishery and agriculture said to me. I looked at Sergei's face: he had the expression believing that nothing could be read from his expression.
"Can't others land?" I asked Takahashi.
"Yes, they can."
Receiving a small walkie-talkie from Sergei, I landed together with this Russian speaking Japanese Takahashi.
Japan, on which the grounds I landed for the first time, was a country where people, buildings and streets were 10 or 20 percent smaller than Russia.
Without going to the hotel, Takahashi walked the crowded town side by side with me, and sometimes a little bit ahead of me, with his hands in his pockets of his old jacket that needed cleaning. He took me to a restaurant, which had an aquarium keeping fish. It was crowded inside. There were smoke, poor ventilation, businessmen wearing neckties with their jackets off, a whole family and a couple of man and woman there.
We sat at a table with a round clay cook stove with a grilling net upon. Takahashi ordered something in a loud voice to the waitress.
In this country, everything were moving like a fats forward film.
A few bottles of Japanese beer and a clear spirits like vodka were delivered. As Takahashi recommended to do so, we drank a toast with beer and as soon as he put down his glass, he started to grill the meat the waitress just brought upon the net. The noisy restaurant grew noisier. Some customer seemed to have spilt his glass of alcohol. The waitress came in a hurry and started to clean up the spot.
"We were expecting to sell your crabs at a large wholesale company in the Tokyo Central Fish Market by auction."
Takahashi said blowing out air from his nose.
"This is a political matter. At a summit conference between Japan and Russia, Russian crab was decided to be sold to Japan. Japan is supposed to give a subsidy to Russia, not only to help this project, but to promote as a trial, Russian exports as a whole. Although, we look upon things more realistic than the big shots. We know well how inferior Russian goods are. Frankly speaking, we are worried about how badly the Japanese market would be influenced by the flood of Russian imports, which lack quality adjustment to the free world market. In addition, there are some Japanese political groups that say this system itself is communism."
"Communism?"
"Yes, they say that it is communism."
I couldn't get the point of Takahashi's story.
"Since 1989, many Russian-Japanese joint ventures took place in the Far East but the very few that took root was not more than a Japanese noodle restaurant in Khabarovsk. So, Russian politicians started to seek for a more new and extraordinary system. A famous Russian politician, who is now out of office, met one Japanese. This old man was called "God" in the Japanese fish business world. The reason why he was called "God" was because this old man predicted about worldwide fishing: situations of various fishing grounds, total amounts of productions, market prices, etc.--and he didn't miss at all. No one knew where this old man's power came from but people came from various fields of business to meet him. The old man told the Russian big shot that Russia should bring its crabs to Japan and sell them at the Japanese wholesale market, which would as a result influence not only the fish business but the whole world economy system."
I recalled my home town Irkutsk and the dark inside of a train, which took me and my family from Moscow to Siberia, when I was still a child. I wondered what kind of karma had restricted and what kind of coincidence had ruled our lives. I wondered if even now, should fates of countries be decided by prophet-like old men such as "God?" "In the good old days of communism, politicians ornamented their dreams with poetic rhetoric, spoke them to people and as a matter of fact, actually realized many of their dreams by economic planning,..." I said.
"...but, those days have gone. Everyone knows that you cannot count on plans, no matter how well planned and reasonable they are, and that the future is not so predictable because unexpected things: accidents, death of people, natural disasters happen...."
"Let's cut this discussion."
Takahashi said.
We drank further more after that, and the last thing I remember about Takahashi's story in my sober mind was something like this.
"After World War‡U, the Japanese have changed a lot. Before the War, Japanese children were taught shu-shin. Shu-shin teaches manners. For example, shu-shin says to 'stay back at least 3 feet back from your teacher, and not step his shadow.' It means that you have to respect your teacher that much. 'Be good, faithful to your parents and country,' is also fundamental. To say more, patience and not annoying other people were also estimated precious. But after the War, shu-shin was banned by the occupation forces because of the suspicion of playing a role in leading Japan into its militarism."

We got out of the restaurant and walked to the corner of the town with the neon lights again. There, I first went into the hotel I was going to stay.
I received the keys from Takahashi and went alone on elevator to the upper-most floor of the sixteen story hotel, where my room was.
I entered the room and put the lights on. There was a picture put on the wall above the bed. I looked at it with my bloodshot eyes. It was a strange kind of oil painting with a girl quietly floating on the water of a pond in a deep dark forest. The girl looked so much like Olga, when she was young.
I thought I might be caught by some ridiculous insanity and watched at my face in the mirror beside. There was a tired face there but it didn't look insane. I saw the picture again. There was no doubt that Olga was there with her eyes closed, but with a slight smile on her face.
I wondered what kind of fate connected me and that picture.
I opened the curtains of the window that viewed the seaside. From under the window was the chaos of the town still not asleep, and from between the darkness and neon, fragments of people's conversations wandered into the room. I saw two large bridges connected to a dark island with a small hill. I thought I felt something, so big to be true, moving slowly in the dark somewhere in the air.
I opened the refrigerator of the room, took out the small bottle of whiskey there and drank directly from it.
The alcohol relieved me out of my tension, and I lied down on bed not to see the picture.
I got up in midnight. The clock beside the Bible was still 1 o'clock. I felt something in the room that bothered me, and without getting up, I saw the table at the opposite side of the room. There, a blue round ball with some kind of a shining core inside was on it. The surrounding was shining brighter in a hazy manner. All of a sudden, it divided into two like a cell division, and the next moment, grew up large as a whole, turning up to become the shape of a man shining strongly blue and flew into the air to land beside my pillow.
It was Zubkov.
I was calm. At least, I knew what was happening: I was either insane, dreaming, or seeing a ghost.
I determined that that mysterious thing was Zubkov and I talked to it.
"I did wrong to you, Zubkov."
<Ah! It's alright, it's alright.>
Zubkov's ghost waved his hand. I could understand what he was thinking about, although he didn't talk. <This is fate, Captain Vakhrushin. What you can predict is not fate. And much more than that, it is too early to apologize.>
"Too early? What makes you say that?"
<I hope you haven't forgotten what you have promised to me. I am supposed to receive my wages of this voyage in cash.>
"Of course, I haven't. But because of the fire, the freezer has broken and the crabs' quality might not be good to sell."
<Oh, no, no, Captain. To say the truth, I have sneaked on board Klyuchevska before we left the port, and hid 20 kilograms of etour(a narcotic that doesn't actually exist, which is perhaps a product of my imagination) in a nylon bag in the center of the boxes of crabs. Even if the crabs are all spoiled, the cargo will not lose it's value. I hope you would exchange that into cash and pass it to my wife and children as a small inheritance of their father's last sail. And, thank you for burying me at sea.>
"I apologize about the water burial. We had no way to carry your body."
<Rather than to be buried in that cold, cold earth of Russia to be eaten entirely by maggots and to become the food of pigs after the food chain, I prefer going deep in the sea to get my body eaten by the king crabs to go south, south down to Asia and travel inside the people's stomachs.>
Finishing to say that, Zubkov's ghost disappeared into the air of the dark room in an instance.

13

The next morning, I got up at about six. I had almost forgotten where I had been, and even felt that I was in some splendid place. Though, I noticed soon that it was just an illusion caused by fragments of a sweet dream. In that dream, I was at my house in my home town, and my parents who had been already dead were there. Olga also ran towards me, smiling.
In reality, I was still just in vain in this small weird hotel in a small far east port.
I saw the picture on the wall. The girl in the picture looked no one either than Olga. My last sail had been full of unpleasant predictions, ghosts and insanity from the beginning to the end.
I quit to think about it any more, got out from bed, shaved my face slowly, changed my underwear and made a contact with Sergei by the walkie-talkie. I asked what they were doing and he answered that they had been brushing the deck of Klyuchevska.
"I saw Zubkov's ghost last night."
"Ah, ha, ha, ha."
"You're laughing too much, Sergei."
"It seems like you have drank a lot with that Japanese Captain. What did Zubkov say?"
"He talked about the crabs."
"Crabs?"
"Yes. By the way, how is the condition of the crabs in the freezer, Sergei?"
"We're almost out of time. We are drinking vodka with the defrosted crabs."
"I see," I said.
The phone of the room rang. I finished exchanging communication with Sergei and took the phone.
"Yes."
"Is this Captain Sergei?"
"Yes, it is."
"This is Takahashi. Have you took your breakfast?"
"No, not yet."
"Okay. Then, please come to the restaurant at the first floor. It would be fine if you would, because I have some things I have to talk with you."
"What do you want to talk with me?"
"Of course, about what to do with the crabs on Klyuchevska."
I looked unconsciously to the place where Zubkov's ghost stood the day before.
"Yes, I believe we have to talk about that in a hurry."
I went down to the first floor of the hotel.
At the restaurant, beside Takahashi, there were two other Japanese and a Russian man wearing a tailor-made gray suit. One of the two Japanese wore a suit and the other wore a jumper. The Russian man was the Russian consul in Japan.
After self-introductions, comforts of the accident and condolences to the dead, I took my breakfast of coffee, scrambled eggs, jam and bread from the buffet style table having Western and Japanese dishes, together with the other people. I felt cynical about myself, turning back to the seat, since I only took food that I usually ate in Russia.
"This time, our scenario had ended up to be a complete failure, but we can also learn many things from failures," said the Russian consul. "I have received commission of full power from the president about this matter."
Takahashi was pushing the keys of his large mobile phone all the time, while taking his breakfast. As soon as he got someone on his line, he spoke a couple of words in Russian saying "Spasibo," and after that, gave me the phone. "It is Mr. Khriukin."
Indeed, this country and Russia is as different as a silent movie and CinemaScope.
The reception of the phone was bad, but I heard what Khriukin said.
"Captain Vakhrushin. It was too bad for you. The plot has been a complete failure this time."
<What will become of the crewmen's wages? The crabs are almost spoiled and it might not sell anymore.>
I almost said that, but because of the time-lag of reception, Khriukin started to talk again overlapping my words.
"The trading of the crabs will be handled by the black market. You should receive commission from Mr. Takahashi, who is by your side. That would be enough to pay the wages to the crewmen, I believe. And, you don't have to buy second hand cars."
Then, a Japanese man who had been eating his breakfast at a table behind us talked to us.
"Hey! You guys! You're noisy. Talking a lot in Russian saying ochen khorosho, ochen khorosho."
I saw him, and it was a middle aged man wearing a shirt with large pattern flower prints, like ones they wear in the tropical islands.
I ignored him and kept on talking.
"That's good," I said to Khriukin. But I ran out of words. I thought I would talk about the ghost of Zubkov, but it seemed insufficient, so I decided not to.
The consul joined the conversation.
"This time we failed, but if we don't lose hope, we will have a next: with the same scenario, though with different actors...."

14

The Japanese who had spoken to us from behind was a movie director called Kitano, who had even received a movie award of a film festival in some European country.
"Mr. Kitano is my acquaintance."
Takahashi said to me. He said that he had invited him here to wait for us.
"Ah, no, no," Kitano said to me. "I came here on the directions of 'God.' I've been taken care a lot from him. I want Captain Vakhrushin to write a manuscript about what you did, or what you saw on this sail. I'll read it and make it into a movie scenario. But you don't have hurry about this. Yeah. You can write it whenever you feel the time's right."
"Why do you think you want to make this a film?" I asked.
"'Cause I think it's interesting."
"Why makes you think that way?"
"Why? Do you know the basic point of criticism? That is to ask if a story written had been really necessary to be written! This is something needed to be written! So, it is interesting! And beside that, there is a guy younger than I who graduated the same university as I and works at the fish market, and this guy says that I should make a film out of this stuff. What a laugh! He's a little bit psycho."

15

After this meeting, it became necessary for me to return to Klyuchevska at once. The consul came together with me to my hotel room.
As soon as the consul entered the room, he looked at the picture with the girl who looked like Olga on the wall and said, " This is of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood." I had to take time to stare at the oil painting and the face of the consul one by one.
"Ophelia, just before she dies in a pond."
"Shakespeare?"
"Indeed. 'Hamlet,'" the consul answered. After that, the consul stayed quiet.
"What will become of the ship and the crabs?" I asked the consul, while watching the picture. My opinion was, since the fire of Klyuchevska was a marine disaster, there should be an insurance paid.
The consul didn't answer and instead said, "Can you imagine how long it took for this painting to come to this distant country?"
I was puzzled about what the consul was trying to say.
"If there is some bags to be packed, I would help," the consul said.
"No, there's none," I said.

I returned in a hurry to Klyuchevska. In about half a day, a different Japanese frigate than before anchored beside us to pick us up.
Approximately at the same time, on the side of the ship opposite to the frigate, a barge with a large flat platform came to transfer the crabs. No 'etour,' that the ghost of Zubkov was saying was discovered and the transportation of the crabs went smoothly. The only thing beside schedule was that one case of frozen red salmon was found in the cargo. I received from Takahashi, the money for the crabs and the fee for Klyuchevska for the transportation of it.

I had to get off board Klyuchevska without having the same fate with her. Sergei passed me a rolled paper.
"What is this?" I asked.
Sergei widened that paper, which was a poster, without saying a single word. A picture of an American or English rock and roll band, with strange looking paintings on their faces appeared.
"I torn off this, which had been left for a long time on the wall, from the cabin of the sailor who had become missing before," said Sergei. He turned it upside down.
"It's some kind of a graffiti."
Tiny words, almost like stains, were written there with a black ball point pen.

I return from my last sail and I go to Afghanistan
I want to die on the sea

"What are you going to do with this?" I asked Sergei.
Sergei pretended to throw it away to the sea, quit it and said, "I'm going to bring it back to his family. No use, but I will."

On the small launch which was to transfer us to the frigate, the waitress started to yell again. "There's a corpse inside the crabs! Zubkov killed him! Zubkov killed him!"
We had to grab the waitress and let her have a gag.
On the frigate, we sailed north the sea of Okhotsk, met a Russian factory ship on the open sea south of Cape Loptka, transferred to her and came back to the port of Petropavlovsk Kamchatskii in 2 days, where the skies were cloudy.
Watching the 3 chimneys associated to Chekhov's "The Three Sisters" at the entrance of the inlet drifting behind, I thought, "What did we sail for?"
Within the sail not more than 20 days, we lost 3 things. The crabs, Klyuchevska and Zubkov. What have we received instead?
--The commission?
--A special history of the far east(the history that the strange Japanese Kitano wants)?
Although it was only a game of mind, I thought that it doesn't count that way. If I had lost 3 things, I would have received 3 things, too.
I must have one more thing to receive.
But, I couldn't imagine about the one more thing.
When "The Three Sisters" went out of sight, and we had come deep into the inlet as much as to feel that it was not them but us who were drifting, the white building of Lenin Kolkhoz came into sight and the deck in front of it came close.
At last, I saw an answer.
Although not many, small groups of people, the families of the crewmen, with broad boundaries, were standing at the dock to greet us and gathering on foot, by car.
Beside Khriukin, who was wearing the familiar black jacket, there was a woman standing. She waved her hand once in a while, modestly.
"Olga!"
I shouted and waved my hands.
All the families of the crewmen were waving their hands.
I thought that I was going back to land. I was no more a captain, nor did I have a ship to raise the sails anymore. But I got back a more precious thing

16

I stood with Olga at a line of people waiting for a bus at the outskirts of the city of Petropavlovsk Kamchatskii. It was an intersection of large trucks going back and forth, sticking out their wheels from the shoulders of the roads. The only thing in sight were a bunch of apartments under construction in a middle of a wild plain. That was a place familiar to the wasteland I saw in my drunkenness, nightmares and visions.
In Japan, when they opened the case of frozen red salmon found mixed in the crab, they found a dead body with a knife still stuck in and a nylon sack with white powder of heroin inside. The corpse was the body of the sailor who had been missing from Klyuchevska. The corpse was transferred by the Japanese Government to Khabarovsk, Russia, and investigation found finger prints of Zubkov from the knife. The authorities determined that Zubkov had been involved in the dealings of drugs and that the death of the sailor was a case related to that matter. Signs of narcotic addiction were found from the waitress but it was not accused because she was caught by mental illness.
Zubkov seemed to have utilized the fish trading for smuggling narcotics. Klyuchevska was about to become a stage of it.

Olga and I were going to the dacha.
"Old-time Dmitrii" will help us but he won't be much useless except for lessening our vodka. I can't help him about that since I had to promise Olga not to drink that stuff.
The short summer of Kamchatska was about to end.
The bus came and the line of people moved a bit.
Getting on the step of the bus, I thought about the lilacs and edelweiss's that bloomed around the dacha.